HOW TO COPE WITH ACADEMIC STRESS AS AN UNDERGRADUATE

 College, obviously requires significantly more effort
from students than high school. Once you enter
college, you will probably find that your fellow
students are more motivated, your instructors are
more demanding, the work is more difficult, and you
are expected to be more independent. These higher
academic standards and expectations are even more
evident in graduate school. As a result of these new
demands, it is common for college students to
experience greater levels of stress related to
academics.
Many students find that they need to develop new
skills in order to balance academic demands with a
healthy lifestyle. Fortunately, the University of
Michigan offers many resources to help students
develop these skills. Many students find that they can
reduce their level of academic stress by improving
skills such as time management, stress management,
and relaxation.
Whether it’s your parents pushing you to boost your
GPA, teachers criticizing you for a less-than-stellar test
scores, or your own drive to get in to your first-choice
college — or some combination of the three —
academic pressure can get the best of you if you don’t
learn how to deal with it properly.

  The Pros and Cons of Stress
Stress is anything that alters your natural balance.
When stress is present, your body and your mind must
attend to it in order to return you to balance. Your
body reacts to stress by releasing hormones that help
you cope with the situation. That in turn takes energy
away from the other functions of your brain, like
concentrating, or taking action. There are two
different sources of stress: external triggers, like
getting a poor grade or breaking up with your
girlfriend/boyfriend, and internal triggers, like placing
high expectations on yourself. We are stressed from
academics while trying to meet up with academic
demands, our parents/guardians, multiple
assignments, and exams. Stress is bad for our health
and brains, this why we have less productivity when
we are stressed.
Hence, we did be sharing few tips with you on “HOW
TO PREVENT STRESS, AN INTERVIEW WITH
A psychotherapist who has helped countless teens
cope with school stresses, about her best tips for
managing academic anxiety. Scroll down for five
helpful ways to get through your high school years
with less stress.
1. Take time for self-care.
He emphasizes that you have to start with the basics,
like sleep. “You have to give your organism the means
to cope with stress, and that includes healthy food,
non-harmful substances, sleep (dramatically more
than most kids think they need), down time… Building
into your day right-brain activity that lets you digest
what you’ve been going through and process it. Those
are some basic and almost biological needs we have.”
Taking time to pause from the relentless pace of
everyday life and enjoy creative activities that keep you
from dwelling on or stressing over school pressures
can go far in decreasing your stress levels.
2. Learn to change your thinking.
“You cannot get stressed out unless you believe your
thoughts,” says Stiffelman. “All stress is precipitated by
stressful thinking.”
When you start stressing about not finishing your
project on time, your mind builds a case for why what
you believe is going to happen will happen — and this
can be paralyzing. So, when combating negative
thinking patterns, he recommends coming up with
specific examples to counter the stressful thoughts.
Think instead of concrete ways that you can create the
time to work on a project, and how your previous line
of thinking isn’t accurate.
3. Take assignments one baby step at a time.
He however, advises her young clients to chunk their
work down into manageable, bite-sized portions that
feel less overwhelming than looking at the big picture.
If you have an essay to write that’s making you feel
anxious, list the individual steps that lead to the
destination of the essay being finished (finding
sources, creating an outline, writing an intro), and the
task will begin to feel less daunting.
“List what you have going on, and list how much time
each thing is going to take,” she suggests. “Chunking
things down makes them feel more manageable and
less anxiety-inducing.”
4. Lower your goals.
No, we’re not talking about being a slacker. According
to Stiffelman, following the truism “Lower your goals,
you’ll achieve more,” can help to relieve
stress and boost academic success.
Instead of setting your goal to be getting the highest
grade in the class, set a goal to feel satisfied with your
performance.
5. Stay balanced during exam periods.
The importance of taking breaks and working in time
to relax during your busiest and most stressful
periods can’t be overestimated, Stiffelman urges. Not
matter how hard you push yourself, nobody can
maintain constant focus, and you will burn yourself
out if you try. Take frequent, short breaks for fun
activities so that you’ll be able to go back to your
writing or studying refreshed.
“Do something that, even for 15 minutes, brings you
back to yourself,” says Stiffelman. “I’ll often say, ‘What
did you love to do when you were six years old?’ Do a
little bit of that when you’re in prep mode to
counterbalance the stress — no brain can work for 24
hours.”
Tell us: How do you cope with pressure at school? Do
you think schools have a responsibility to help their
students manage stress?
Source:

How to overcome inferiority complex

We all fall in the trap of comparison wherein we
inevitably compare ourselves with others. This
comparison does more harm to us than good. This
does not mean we stop looking up to others. But there
is a difference between learning from others and
simply comparing yourself with them and then feeling,
‘Oh! Wish I was like her!’
This comparison is the main cause of inferiority
complex. We compare ourselves with our neighbors,
colleagues, batch mates, celebrities, siblings and with
strangers too!
It happened with me several times that often while
traveling I spotted fashionable women around. I
looked at their dresses, their style and matching
accessories and then glanced at my attire which was
usually a comfy, simple dress. In the name of
accessories, I generally wore a wrist watch and my
make up comprised of a light color lipstick. That’s all.
So each time I came across a hip girl on street, I was
ready to sulk and to term myself a ‘dodo’. But this was
long ago.
Over time, with some self conscious efforts and with
company of some wise, supportive friends, I have
overcome my inferiority complex of not being able to
dress up in style. Also I realized that beauty lies in
simplicity. In the process, I have learnt several lessons
and am ready to share them here.

 Determine your specific inferiority
It is better to be specific than generally feeling low.
Narrow it down to a specific type first. Do you feel
inferior to rich people, educated people, good looking
people, famous people? First find out your category of
inferiority. I had the weird complex with people who
had a trendy, contemporary dressing style!
Once you are done with finding your category, lean it
further with names. List down the names of people. I
felt inferior with particularly two friends of mine. So
come up with the names. Once you have the names,
you need to know why you feel inferior to them. Do
they make you feel low? If yes, dump them right now
and move on. If no, then ask yourself ‘who says I am
not as good as that Xyz’? You have the answer and that
is the solution.
Your Thinking Matters
Eleanor Roosevelt said, ‘no one can make you feel
inferior without your permission’ and she said it so
right. It is us who feel inferior and if we change our
thinking, every thing about us changes.
There is a difference in being inferior and feeling
inferior. Being inferior is simply a game of relativity.
But not everyone feels inferior.
If we lay more emphasis on what others think about
us, we attract more problems in life. This is our life
and only our opinion should matter. Finding faults in
ourselves based on whether others find us good
enough or not is not going to help anybody. It
becomes dangerous when we may actually be better
than others but somehow feel worse than them.
Chuck that habit of taking others’ judgements about
you seriously and then feeling low.
Love Thyself
The one thumb rule for a happy life is learning to love
oneself. I am totally in love myself so much so that
many of my friends call me a narcissist. No doubt,
earlier I was not too confident of my dressing sense
but slowly, I overcame that guilt as well. And now, I
love myself just the way I am.
We would never even find the need of comparing
ourselves with others if we are satisfied with our ‘self’.
Loving oneself is the first step to achieve confidence
and that sets the path for high self esteem.
Stop wanting to be some one else. Just be yourself
and create your own identity. Someone probably
sometime told you that you were not good enough
and you have been carrying that luggage even today!
Drop it right now. I threw it off and I am much lighter
and better and happier.
Seek Positive Company
It is very important to be in company of people who
are very positive in nature. If you are surrounded by
people who spend half of their time in analyzing
others and judging them, probably you would get
influenced too.
Be with people who like others the way they are. Seek
positive company. In a good company and with people
who gladly accept you as you are, you would grow up
to be more confident of yourselves.
Finally, again, your confidence should not depend on
others. It should exude from within.
In the end, I would like to quote the following lines:
Do what thy manhood bids thee do, from none but
self expect applause;
He noblest lives and noblest dies who makes and
keeps his self-made laws.